There is definitely no shortage of resources for starting your own school garden in NYC! We’ve covered how you can DIY with GrowNYC’s Grow to Learn program, start a school garden on a fence with the Wooly School garden program, or even pursue becoming an Edible Schoolyard NYC garden site.

But if you really want to talk to the experts and get comfortable with the basics, NYBG is hosting another School Gardening workshop on election day- November 8th. Register soon before spaces fill up!

School Gardening Workshop at New York Botanical Garden

8:30 am – noon; Cost: $35

Come learn about the benefits of having a garden on your school site. Join NYBG staff and other gardening organizations to learn about logistics, resources, and curriculum connections for creating, maintaining, and integrating gardens into your students’ learning. This half-day workshop is the perfect primer for helping you begin planning or even rekindling a garden on your school site.

If you teach grades 2- 5 and are looking for more ways to utilize New York as an outdoor classroom, consider heading “Into the Woods” with this four year teacher development program offered by the NY Metro GLOBE program. The first workshops begin in October 2012 and there are only a few slots left! There will be 11 workshops throughout the first year, held on Saturdays or Sundays. Participating teachers are given a $125 stipend for each 7 hour training day.

Some topics include:

Pond Ecology in various parks in Queens

Stream Ecology, the Bronx River

Geology, parks in Queens and the Bronx

Forest Ecology

Seal Watch

Bird watching and ornithology, Prospect Park

Butterflies

Service Learning Projects

Authentic Student Environmental Research Projects

If you are interested, create a no obligation account online at www.globe.gov

For more information about registering, you can call or e-mail Peter Schmidt at 718-997-4268, Peter.schmidt@qc.cuny.edu or Roy Harris RHarris2@schools.nyc.gov .
*This project is funded by an Environmental Literacy Grant from NOAA, and is being run by Queens College’s GLOBE NY Metro Program in partnership with the Wallerstein Collaborative for Urban Environmental Education at NYU.

Yesterday, we had some feathered visitors from BKFarmyards join us at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for a program sponsored by National Grid. Take a look at the fun!

Madison and Stephanie arrived on a bicycle with three hens visiting from their coup at Imani Garden down the street. These ladies are graduates of the Chicken Apprenticeship program offered by BK Farmyards. The program runs for three months and leaves you with the knowledge to begin raising your own hens in the city! The program begin at the end of May and applications are being accepted now.

Kids had the chance to pet the chickens and asked some awesome questions: What is that red thing called on the top of their heads? A comb! Why do the Chickens peck at the ground? They’re looking for worms and seeds to munch on.

Brave visitors had the chance to feed the chickens leafy greens from our garden. And then…

We got a surprise when one of the hens laid an egg on the spot! Talk about getting kids to understand where their food comes from…they were able to feel the warm egg!

I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know these friendly hens. Have you ever been to Imani Garden? BK Farmyards offers field trips and farm tours for school groups. You can visit Imani Garden or have the chickens come to you! Contact them at eggs@bkfarmyards.org.

Are you looking for ways to re-invigorate your teaching? There are lots of great options for professional development this winter! Check out these workshops that will help you add a sustainable focus to your classroom:

Environmental Explorations NYC at Van Cortlandt Park

This program uses hands-on activities to bring NYC’s local outdoor resources and nature into the classroom and enhance classroom learning. Materials covered include Project WILD, Project WET, Project Learning Tree and more, in addition to introducing teachers to local environmental resources. Teachers will be provided with new strategies for introducing environmental topics in connection with math, literacy, and art, fostering student leadership and developing higher order thinking skills.

The program is from February 20 to February 25, 2012. To register, visit the After School Professional Development’s website at http://schools.nyc.gov/Teachers/aspdp and view their spring course catalog. With questions, contact Sara Kempton, Friends of Van Cortlandt Park, 718-601-1553 or sara@vancortlandt.org.

Creative Infusion: The Art of Reuse at Materials for the Arts

Materials for the Arts is an amazing warehouse of art supplies in Queens. This course, which offers P-credits, gives you access to the warehouse and teaches you how to problem solve through reuse and how to create games, books, costumes and sets, puppets, and mosaics. The course incorporates literacy and math into activities. The program takes place over 6 Saturdays. For details and information about registration and fees, check out their website.

Earlier this week, the New York Botanical Garden offered a workshop introducing educators to the basics of school gardening. If you’re interested in a more in-depth offering, check out their institutes in 2012 (which coincide with public school breaks):

If you are looking for a great sustainability-focused training on election day, here are two options:

School Gardening Workshop at New York Botanical Garden

8:30 am – noon; Cost: $20

Come learn about the benefits of having a garden on your school site. Join NYBG staff and other gardening organizations to learn about logistics, resources, and curriculum connections for creating, maintaining, and integrating gardens into your students’ learning. This half-day workshop is the perfect primer for helping you begin planning or even rekindling a garden on your school site.

This interactive workshop promotes an understanding of energy’s relationship
with the environment, our economy, efficiency AND the all important “E” – education. You will use hands-on activities to explore energy forms and sources, global climate change and actions we can take to address the energy challenges we face. Participants will walk away with both the 4Es of Energy (4th-6th) and the Take Action at Home (4th-6th) curricula.

The Brooklyn Children’s Museum has another energy workshop coming up, this one for teachers of 6th-12th grade. This workshop, Energy and Our Changing Earth, will focus on using data to teach about climate science. Also hosted by NYSERDA, it will be held on Friday, November 11th. Call 1-877-NY-SMART (Option 6) to register.

Just a reminder – next week, Brooklyn Children’s Museum is offering free professional development workshops for educators. The same My Green Community workshop is offered twice:

Thursday, October 20th, 4pm – 7pm

Saturday, October 22nd, 10am – 1pm

Join Brooklyn Children’s Museum’s educational team for a workshop on inquiry-based, hands-on experiences exploring what it means to live in a “green community” like New York City. We will give you a copy and walk you through “My Green Community,” a unit plan designed by BCM that ties in with NYC curriculum and standards for pre-K through grade 6 and explores green community features. Activities and lessons include links to literacy, math, science, social studies and the arts.

Come by to receive a print copy of our educator’s guide, free teacher resources from other New York City institutions, and lots of hands-on lesson ideas for your classroom.